Saturday, February 02, 2008

Book Review: "Don't Make Me Think"

One of the must have books on my reference shelf is "Don't Make Me Think, A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability" by Steve Krug. I've recommended this book to many people, so I thought it was about time to give it a proper review.

One of the things that first drew me to this book when it first appeared was the subtitle. I've said it again and again, but it bears repeating...much of the "science" of good UI design is just common sense. This begs the question as to why some people find it so hard, and I think the answer lies in the idea of common sense in our society. We are so busy being busy that oftentimes we don't slow down enough to really *think* about a problem and thus the common sense solution eludes us. A book like "Don't Make Me Think" is a great way to make you put on the brakes a little and examine the fundamental principles of usability. For those of you that aren't web developers, don't be scared off. Although the focus of Mr. Krug's book is web design, most of the concepts are equally extensible to other design work, such as building a UI in the Lotus Notes client.

If you've not read any books on interface design or usability before, this book provides the perfect intro into that world. As he mentions in the forward, this book is for those people or companies that don't have a usability professional on board or can't hire one for some reason or another. If you're like most Notes shops, you probably have a small budget since we can do so much with so little. By taking the ideas introduced in "Don't Make Me Think" you can be on your way to doing this work yourself very quickly.

The author's writing style is both casual and witty and he follows the advice of his title when explaining new concepts, breaking it down so you can understand the underlying psychology without getting bogged down in terminology or theory. Chapter 1 begins with an introduction to what the author calls "Krug's First Law of Usability": "Don't Make Me Think". Simply put, this means that your ultimate goal is to design your interface so that when you look at it, it is immediately evident what you can do and how you go about doing it. In this chapter, Krug explores some of the elements of design that put more cognitive load on us than is necessary and then demonstrates ways to reduce this load. This is done through both the narrative as well as excellent graphics which simply but elegantly display his point.

Chapters 2 through 5 begin the exploration of how we really go about using an interface and set forth the guiding principles we need to be thinking about when designing. First, Krug talks about the difference in what we design for (reading, more reading and even more reading in a set pattern) vs. the reality of how people scan through an interface in a seemingly chaotic way. He then extends on the lessons learned here by helping you understand the techniques you can use to design interfaces for scanning rather than reading. He addresses five important things you can do to achieve the goal of capturing user eyeballs as much as possible: creating a clear visual hierarchy, breaking pages into clearly defined areas, minimizing ui noise, making clickable elements obviously clickable and taking advantage of established UI conventions. This first section wraps up with a discussion of why we like "mindless" choices and the importance of good copywriting and how you need to omit all but the essential words in your design.

Chapters 6 and 7 focus on the elements that Krug believes you must get right in your design. Chapter 6 is concerned with laying out the fundamentals behind good navigation. Since this is an area I call a lot of bad designs out on, it's one that I really enjoyed. Krug discusses some of the basic concepts of navigation and why navigation is so important to a user. He deconstructs various navigation conventions and explains why they work or don't work effectively. He also addresses the good use of search, page names, breadcrumbs, and the tab metaphor. Chapter 6 ends with a number of great graphics which show several sites as they were designed and the author's analysis of what was wrong. He then shows a revised version based on what he would do and in some cases also shows the company's own effort at making some improvements. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so it would be good for the reader to spend some time pouring over these excellent examples. Chapter 7 is devoted to the design of the homepage and how to best design that important first impression. As in Chapter 6, there are a lot of great "before and after" examples to round out the theory.

The next two chapters of "Don't Make Me Think" are concerned with how you make sure you did the right things in your design. That is, they focus on one of my favorite topics, the idea of usability testing. In particular, Krug wants the user to walk away after reading these chapters realizing that usability testing is within reach of every single developer out there. Sure, in the ideal world we'd all have a department of usability experts that are there to critique our designs and help us craft the most user-friendly interfaces possible, but we all know that our day to day jobs are far from the ideal world. Still, Krug argues, you can find value in any amount of testing you can do. Krug espouses some common sense thoughts about usability testing, such as the idea that it is an iterative process, that you should test early and often and that testing even one user is better than testing none. Once he convinces you of the importance of usability testing, he presents some simple to follow instructions on how you can carry out your own tests. As he points out, it doesn't have to be expensive or fancy. You really can do this stuff on a shoestring budget. Chapter 9 ends with a sample excerpt from a test session, which in my opinion is probably worth the cost of the book right there.

Krug wraps up the final chapters of the book with a focus on the larger concerns of interface design, such as why usability should be considered a common courtesy, where accessibility comes into the picture and how to deal with a boss that "doesn't get it". If you just want to cut to the chase and start improving your designs right away you can skip these chapters, but they do a nice job of summarizing at a high level many of the salient points of the book.

All in all, "Don't Make Me Think" is a thoroughly enjoyable read and a very practical book for those that aspire to create better interfaces for their users. Coming in at just under 200 pages with lots of clear illustrations, you can probably read this book in a couple of evenings, which is great for those of us intimidated by the 1000 page tomes that populate the computer section in most bookstores. Probably the best part of "Don't Make Me Think" is that it applicable to the work you are doing today. You can read a chapter or two and immediately start putting the concepts into practice and the value you'll get as you do so far exceeds the book's cover price. "Don't Make Me Think" is highly recommended and I hope you make the decision to add it to your reading list today. You don't even have to think about it! :-)

I've added this book to my Amazon cart. Never in a million years would I even check a book like this out on the shelf but your review has me motivated to read it. It's kind of like the da vinci code, a book on religion? It just wasn't my thing until my wife forced me to read it. Glad i did; one of my favorites. Awesome review!

@Elf...ah, another great book. You'll find common themes between these two works (as you will with many books on interface design), but "Don't Make Me Think" is specifically focused on one thing...web development. "The Design of Everyday Things" is more of an overall treatment of the field as a whole and focuses on a lot of the psychological theory behind design. I'll be reviewing this book in the future as well, but it's another on my "must read" list. If you want to understand the "why" behind many ui patterns and constructs, then "The Design of Everyday Things" is a great place to start.

@Yancy...cool. Hope you find the book as useful as I did! :-) I agree on "The Da Vinci Code". I really had no interest in reading it, but a friend pretty much forced it on me. I ended up really enjoying it, but I found "Angels and Demons" even more compelling. Cheers...

Nice review - that is one of the books I recommended for the holiday gift giving season. (I think Krug lives in my neighborhood somewhere, actually, and I've been meaning to email him to come to Westford for a talk, too! He was recently at a local UPA meeting which was SRO.)

Good review! This is book is definitely a game-changer. I especially like the part about how web designers are invariably shocked by usability studies, when they see how people are really navigating their sites!